ABOUT the first of April I received a letter from father, saying that
they had at last concluded to put in execution a plan that had been
spoken of before I left home—namely, going to Europe while I was
finishing my studies. They would go first to Cuba, where they would
spend some time at Carlotta’s home, and where father could attend to
the management of her large estates. They would then sail directly
for Liverpool, and spend two or three years in England and on the
continent. I was to graduate at Chapel Hill, then go to Berlin or
Heidelberg.
I felt almost irresistibly impelled to write and ask permission to
accompany them, but reflecting on it, determined to remain at Chapel
Hill and study with renewed diligence.
A second letter, some weeks later, informed me that all necessary
arrangements had been completed, and that father, mother and Carlotta
would be in Raleigh on a specified night, on their way to New York,
to take steamer for Havana, and requesting me to meet them, to say
good-bye.
At the appointed time I met them, and while they were cheerful I could
not help feeling sad at the thought of being left here alone; but I
bore up bravely under the disappointment, and promised father that he
should hear a good report of me.
After tea he and mother walked up town to see an old friend, and
Carlotta and I were left together. While she was affable and pleasant
as possible, I could not shake off a silent moodiness, and she, to
divert me, and to relieve our rather dull conversation, brought me a
casket of jewels that belonged to her mother. They had been sent to
her by the agent of Mr. Rurleston’s estate in Cuba, and had reached
her since I left home. There were antique rings and bracelets of most
exquisite workmanship, there were diamonds that would have made Mahmoud
of Ghisni envious, and pearls that would have equalled the Zanana. I
was very much struck by the design of a pair of bracelets. They were
made in Etruscan gold and were a pair of serpents with ruby eyes and
emerald spots. They were made long, flexible and spiral, so that when
clasped upon the arm they seemed to be gliding up the flesh. There was
some long family history connected with them, which Carlotta related,
but I have forgotten its tenor. But the most interesting article in the
casket was a beautifully enamelled locket, containing a picture of her
mother. When she opened it and I looked upon the face, I was perfectly
entranced. Its beauty was of that radiant perfection that seems only
to have existed in the conceptions of Vandyke or Correggio. It was
perfect in every exquisite feature, yet its wondrous fascination lay in
their combination. The lustrous, pensive eyes, the delicately curved
mouth, the soft, olive complexion, the oval outline of her face, were
all beautifully relieved by the rich mass of raven hair that fell in
splendid profusion over the bare, smooth neck.
Lillian’s beauty depended greatly on her skilful adornment, and her
brilliant appearance was ever in debt to her toilet, but this face
needed no cosmetic, its beauty was nature’s gift, and art could only
enhance it.
It was my ideal, and my heart only withheld its homage because ‘twas
but a portrait.
Looking up from it to address Carlotta, I was startled to find in
her face an exact counterpart of the picture, only her features were
childish and immature. Her beauty was the bud, this the perfect bloom.
“Will she be like this when she is grown? Heavens! how I would adore
her!” I thought, as I gazed from one to the other and marked the points
of resemblance.
I had ever regarded Carlotta as a pretty child, whom everybody
admired, but I had not thought of her as growing up into the perfect,
lovely woman; but now a strange indescribable unrest awoke in my heart,
and I felt that I should be far more unhappy when she was gone than I
had thought.
While I had never, and could not then think of loving her, save as
a friend and brother, yet the reflection that she was going away to
forget me and perhaps to love another, was galling in the extreme to my
feelings, both of pride and disappointment.
“Carlotta,” I said, handing the picture back to her with a compliment,
and looking at her with a newly awakened interest, “I fear that amid
all the splendor and novelty of the scenes through which you will soon
pass, you will forget almost that I ever lived.”
“No, indeed,” she replied, looking at me frankly, “there is no danger
of that; gratitude, if nothing else, will keep your memory ever fresh
with me.”
“But you will be a grown lady ere you return, and will, I know, have
many admirers. You will love some one of them, and I will be only a
cipher in your past.”
“No, no, you have been too noble and good to me. Do you think me so
base? Here!” and taking a pair of scissors from her box, she cut off
a long curling ringlet of hair and put it in my hand, “keep that as
my pledge that I will remember you every day while I am gone, and no
matter when we meet again I promise to redeem it, as the same little
Carlotta you have been so kind to.”
“Thank you, Carlotta, I will treasure it carefully,” I said, folding it
up with a strange thrill of pleasure for only a child’s simple gift.
Father and mother came back now, and after a few words of parting and
some tears, I bade them good-bye and hastened down to the office, as I
was to return to Durham’s on the night train.
Oh, what a pleasure to me was that single lock of hair!
For days and months after they were gone a glance at it would
recall her dear face in all its beautiful earnestness, as she so
unhesitatingly pledged her remembrance. And now that she was gone—for
years, perhaps forever—I found—yes, I will confess it—child as she
was, _I loved her_.